Intrigue
by Ender Mahe
Summary: My OC is an engineer on an old passenger liner when it is attacked by pirates.  But appearances can be deceiving, and she will find herself wrapped up in complex plots that target and involve some well known faces. On hold until Reawakening is done.


The cracks grew like rain dripping slowly down a window, spreading and splitting as they came. _Temperature change on the weakened structure of the super-hardened transparent plastic_ the little voice in the back of Mara's mind said. And it was true. Outside the viewport the sun was just coming into view as the wildly careening ship spun just right. It looked like a sunrise. Her pupils contracted slightly against the harsh orange glare of true sunlight, which dominated the pale blues of the emergency lighting. It was beautiful, really. How often had she glanced at it in passing, making no note of the grandeur of spaceflight in the day-to-day routines of a luxury passenger liner. Quickly the sun spun out of the viewport only to be replaced by an endless star field. Beautiful. It was all she could see from her collapsed position on the bed, covered in debris.

Slowly her hearing started to return as her ears overcame the temporary deafness of the grenade that had thrown her and what seemed like half the deck into this private room. The muffled staccato of distant gunfire was punctured by the sharp snaps as the viewport gave more ground to the relentless cracks. It would not hold out much longer.

Mara's mind started to turn again, thoughts started to flow as she worked her arms and legs, trying to get a little space to play with. They was in serious trouble. Pirates or Slavers, or perhaps even both, for that's all one could assume on a hit like this, had come in hard and fast. There'd been no warning, no incoming ship to tip their hands, so it had to have been an inside job. Pirates, planted at strategic locations. But somehow, somewhere along the lines, things hadn't gone according to their plan, and the security team had made it to their weapons, and chaos had broken loose. Chaos with loose grenades headed towards lowly engineers. It had been adrenaline blasting instinct which sent her diving into the room, and luck (and very small room sizes) that landed her on the bed, which was soft enough to keep the extra momentum so generously provided to her flight from killing her.

At least her arms had made enough breathing room to get some real force behind the biggest sheet of (weight saving) plastic and she slid it off herself to the floor. She let out a long sigh of relief from the pressure, only to find that it had been holding pain at bay. Her ankle throbbed, and her stomach groaned, demanding she curl up into a little ball of misery. But the viewport, the viewport . . . At last she clawed her way to her feet and took in her situation. She had to get out of here, and quickly. Another cracked jumped nearly two inches in the viewport. The door was sealed, a strobing blue light above it to indicate an atmospheric breach. Only an override from the bridge or head of engineering could unlock it now. The rush of superheated air from the grenade must have been enough to trigger the door safety lockout.

At this knowledge, her mind started to focus. She wasn't the bravest, certainly, and not the strongest, or quickest, but what she _was_ was intelligent, and when a problem confronted her she could focus on it with complete concentration; it was what got her through her classes in engineering back in college when most of the time it seemed so unimportant that she couldn't bring herself to care about it. Which also explained why she was on some middle-of-the-road cruise ship instead of an advanced warship where she belonged, but you take what you can get. But when game time came, she always stepped up to the challenge. All of which was why, at this moment, she became almost tunnel visioned in her focus on the problem before her, a problem which needed fixing. Even pain became secondary. The room was locked, not openable without a lot of time she didn't have. Other exits. The viewport, perhaps. Space was survivable if you were quick enough to get back inside, but no, the security team would have sealed the ship as best they could against the onslaught of more pirates. Which left... the engineering crawl-ways. She slid into the gap between the bed and floor, mercifully free of debris which had rained down from above, and reached into the far corner. The carpet there was loose, and with a swift yank she revealed an access way. The darkness beneath the bed suddenly glowed bright orange as she activated her omnitool and sent the general engineering override into the small access panel, and was rewarded with. . . nothing. The panel started to pulse a lurid red. Most people would have started to panic, but she was in the groove, solving the problem. She paused to think for a moment, even as the loudest crack yet came from the quickly deteriorating viewport.

Sweat, from adrenaline, not fear, poured down her body and started to stick her to the cheaper-than-it-looked carpeting, with its little hairs which clung to her bare legs and feet. _The emergency override_. She didn't take the time to glance down at the thought from the miniature AI within her omnitool, but rather went straight to inputting the code.

An alarm activated, strobed faintly once or twice, and gave up in the shattered room as she quickly, if awkwardly in the confined space, slid her legs around and down into the access way. Another crack issued from the viewport, and another as her foot touched the first rung. Only half-way into the access way, favoring her left ankle, left the viewport gave out at last, shattering into a million pieces which quickly fled into the void. The atmosphere yanked her bodily back towards the room, but her head smashed into the frame of the bed and held her in place. Even dazed she had the presence of mind to shove off got far enough into the access tunnel that it's pull wasn't strong enough to pull her back. Or hold her in place. Instead she went into free-fall and lost consciousness when her ankle encountered the floor.

The blackout was brief, as the cramped confines of a starship meant the drop was quite small, and she found herself flopped gracelessly in the narrow crawl way. Her little hole was illuminated with pale blue from the now atmosphere-sealed port above her. Beyond lay only darkness.

Once again she activated her omnitool and considered it. The AI she'd constructed within it was so small it didn't even truly merit the title of an AI, and was thus (mostly) perfectly legal, but it was quite helpful. She'd yet to name it even, it was that newly finished. It pulsed the orange glow comfortingly at her. A shiver brought her back to her predicament. It was cool down in the crawl-ways, yet another cost-saving feature, and the sweat had dried on her skin. She slid to her stomach, ignoring as best she could the protests from her ankle. They would get only worse with time; she had to act quickly. With a quick flick of her wrist she activated the omnitool's flashlight and started crawling. Very quickly she discovered the that the loose black scoop-neck shirt she wore to sleep (which a quick bathroom trip highlighted by gunfire and grenades had interrupted) was not the best attire for this sort of action. She quickly bunched the top together and knotted it off at the small of her back. Not the most elegant solution, but you worked with what you had.

The crawl-way was a maze of pipes, cables and occasionally loose wiring about a foot high and only a three across. The designers were careful to make sure they were passable by human standards, in case of catastrophic failure, but by and large these tunnels were inhabited only by small robotic henchman. All of which meant they were tiny and uncomfortable. Claustrophobia was never really an issue with her, unless she couldn't turn around. It didn't make sense, really, but there it was. So long as she could turn herself around to get out, it didn't bother her, but there wasn't much choice here. So she crawled onwards, occasionally scratching herself on protruding bolts from the back of deck-plates, and other such random odds and ends.

After a very long 15 meters she reached a juncture where the paths forked to the right and left. She glanced at her omnitool and saw her AI had anticipated her and brought up the ships blueprints with the crawl-way spaces labeled on them. The ship was small, by old-world standards, but quite large for a space craft, which dealt with mass and momentum rather than aerodynamics and lift. She lay towards the front of the Kowloon class merchant ship which held most of the passenger space, as far away from the distant thrum of the standard drive core as possible, as well as the cockpit. She considered heading there only for a moment. That was exactly where every slaver with a gun was headed, and she wouldn't have time to figure out how to make anything work anyways – it wasn't like new hires like herself got to head up into the cockpit and mess with all the buttons and dials. Which left the engine, if they were going to avoid being sold into slavery. There she could do more good. Left, then, it was after all.

She made fairly rapid progress, all things considered, through the darkened crawl spaces. Occasionally she'd hear sounds from above or below on the different decks, the sobbing of terrified passengers, gunfire from whatever resistance was still fighting, screams as people (combatants only, she hoped) were shot and left to die in agony. She thought about dropping out of the crawl way to join the people huddled in their rooms, but there truly was no point. It was actually safer, most likely, up in here, and here she might actually be able to accomplish something meaningful. Her only real hold-up was where another grenade had made a mess of things. Live wires sparked and spat their golden energy, while dark, viscous fluids slowly dribbled out of of pipes whose purpose even Mara didn't recognize. For an engineer, particularly one as obsessively organize as Mara, it was a nightmare. Still, there was no point in trying to fix whatever the problems were. There were bigger issues at hand. At length she gave up and tore a strip from the bottom of her shirt to protect her hand as she shoved aside the mess of wires and slid on through the pooling liquid and beneath the frighteningly drooping crawl-space cover. At last she made it to another entry point in the crawl way system. A quick check of her omnitool confirmed her path; she had made it to the emergency access to engineering, which lay along the primary access route along the very top of the ship, connecting the bridge on the far end through the security station at the docking tube to engineering and finally the drive core at the back. The rest of the decks below her consisted of the standard detachable luxury cabin compartments on the Kowloon class MSV Slavic. It was a serviceable, if slow, human-designed transport seen across all of Citadel space and beyond. Nothing special.

_No active armor signatures detected. Go ahead Mara._

With the go-ahead given Mara suddenly felt all the pressure of the confined space, the black fluid smeared across her, and almost frantically scrambled up the ladder and slid open the emergency access panel. A quick glance confirmed her AI's readings; she was alone. The slavers had already been through. Engineering, her normal workspace, looked all wrong to her. Several of the monitors had shorted out, as whoever had been on duty at this late hour had tried to dump all data and crash the system, which would require the captains command codes to reactivate. They'd only gotten halfway through, the and several knocked over and consoles and chairs made it apparent that they'd been forced to stop halfway. That said, if the slavers had taken the bridge anything she did here would be temporary, at best, and merely call attention to herself at worst. No good options. The drive core, however. . .

_Weapons fire has ceased. There have been no system updates, which leads me to believe the intruders have full control. Whatever you're going to do, hurry!_

Mara jogged over to the secure entryway into the drive core, hoping the pirates had been foolish enough to leave it unguarded, before skidding to a stop. The emergency hatch was slammed shut, the attached light strobing a lurid red. Atmospheric breach. There was no way through.

"Is there any way through?"

_The only other access is the exterior docking access. You'll need a hardsuit, however._

Spacewalking on a ship in an uncontrolled tumble was _not_ her idea of a pleasant pastime, but if she could make it to the core it would probably be the safest place on the ship. She turned to head back through the corridor towards the security station.

_Incoming!_

With a jolt she was off and broke for the portal towards the security station as fast as her hobbled ankle allowed. There was no way to get back into the engineering crawl-ways in time, she had to trust to luck. The sound of gunfire rapidly approaching made her push herself even harder, harder than she'd ever run before, ignoring the AI's speculation about infighting among the pirates. She slammed herself into the corner by the portal just as it slid open. The sound was suddenly overwhelming, the high chatter of submachine gun fire and the deeper studder of assault rifles abruptly clear. One of the pirates, his armor painted a dirty yellow, slid into cover on her side of the door and put his back against it, his assault rifle still peeking around the corner. If he hadn't have coming in backwards, still firing towards whatever was out there, he'd have seen Mara in a heartbeat. As it was, she remained unnoticed only inches away, as terrified as she'd ever been in her life. The pirates legs blocked the view of a second pirate who slid to an identical position on the far side, and a third appeared, only to collapse in a heap as the heavy impact of what must have been a sniper rifle blew straight through his helmet face plate. Mara was torn between the overwhelming need to scream, to run, to _do_ something, and the paralysis of absolute terror.

The hammer of weapons fire continued relentlessly, endlessly, until the hypervelocity thud of the sniper rifle round landed again. Suddenly the only sound was the heavy breathing of the pirate. Mara hazarded a glance up at him. The longer look let her take in more of his appearance. Once she got past the intimidation of the hardsuit she realized he was quite short and thin; probably Salarian. It was right at that moment that luck, paranoia, or some sixth sense turned him to look right at her. They both froze for a second, shock keeping them still. Then the pirate started to bring his assault rifle around. The movement broke Mara free of her paralysis and she grabbed his skinny frame and shoved. Under normal circumstances that would have been her death, taking away her only hope of keeping his weapon out of line. In this case, however, it served only to bring the Salarian straight into the sights of whatever was out there, and the sniper didn't let her down. The Salarian's helmet imploded, dropping him to the floor, leaving yellow blood to seep out of the shattered black faceplate.

Moments trickled by. The horror of it, that she'd killed somehow, however indirectly, hammered at her control, threatening to reduce her to a crying lump curled up in the corner. She clung to her focus, to her need to solve the problems, to fix what was wrong; it was the only thing that held her together. With a deep breath she peaked around the corner and quickly pulled back. Nothing. She dared a longer glance, and still, nothing. There was no sign of the sniper down the narrow, space-conserving corridor. Her adrenaline was pumping so hard she couldn't feel her ankle at all. She ran.


End file.
